Booth 1
Paige Booth
LA 101H
2/16/12
Imagine having someone you love blown up by a nuclear weapon. This is exactly what
Lyndon B. Johnson wanted his audience to imagine when they saw his political campaign ad
“Daisy Girl”. Johnson was running for president after he had a brief term in 1963 after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Lyndon B. Johnson was running for election against
Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964. During the election Goldwater was known for his extremist views and his support of using nuclear weapons against Communist countries. This campaign took place during the beginning of the Cold War and the Vietnam War (The Living
Room Candidate). The “Daisy Girl” ad showed a little girl picking a daisy and counting to ten.
The little girl’s voice then was replaced with a very ominous male voice counting down from ten. The camera then zooms in on the little girl’s eye which shows a nuclear explosion that kills the little girl. The ad appealed to the audience’s emotions and had good use of character and timing. The ad wound up being extremely influential to Johnson’s win. Lyndon B. Johnson’s
“Daisy Girl” ad facilitated his landslide win against opponent Barry Goldwater by highlighting
Goldwater’s extremist ideals.
Lyndon B. Johnson had many key points he was trying to make with this ad. First, he showed the destruction that would follow if Goldwater was elected President by implying that the U.S. would likely enter a nuclear war with Russia and Vietnam, resulting in mass destruction and costing innocent people their lives. A nuclear bomb was dropped in Hiroshima, Japan by
United States President Harry Truman which caused diseases for the area around the city.

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Johnson aimed to show the citizens of the United States that this destruction could happen on US soil.
Johnson’s next point is made after the little girl is blown up and it cuts to Lyndon B.
Johnson saying “We must either love each other or we must die.” This line shadows a line from a
W.H. Auden poem “September 1, 1939” about World War II (Poets.org). By using this line
Johnson shows that he believes a nuclear war will do more harm to the population than it will to fix the problems of the time. If people do not love each other, then we will continue to hurt each other. The fact that Johnson picks that exact poem also alludes to the highly controversial fact that the United States dropped a nuclear bomb in Japan. Since the poem is about World War II it reminded citizens that we just recently gotten out of a highly destructive war. From the use of the little girl to the allusion to the W.H. Auden poem, Johnson implanted doubt in the voter’s minds about Barry Goldwater.
Another point that Johnson makes in his ad against Barry Goldwater, is that if Goldwater becomes President he will put the United States in danger. One of the major lines in the ad is when Lyndon B. Johnson says “These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark.” This line warns the American voters that if Goldwater is elected they are “going into the dark” where some innocent people will die. With this line,
Johnson puts the decision in the voter’s hands but warns that the stakes are extremely high.
Along with this warning about voting for the right person, Johnson promises that once Goldwater took office he would definitely use nuclear weapons. Not only does he say that Goldwater will use nuclear weapons he implies that the citizens will suffer from it by saying that the world will
“go into the dark”. The points that Lyndon B. Johnson makes with his “Daisy Girl” ad show that
Goldwater being President will detrimentally affect the entire United States.

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The character of the “Daisy Girl” ad helped get the key points of Johnson’s argument across to the public. While there is only one character shown in the ad, the choice of using a little girl helped appeal to their audience’s emotions. While it is a tragedy to lose anyone, an audience is more likely to be shocked if a small child dies. If the ad was changed to an adult being blown up by a nuclear weapon, the appeal to a person’s emotions would not be as strong. They also picked a small child because it shows that if we use nuclear weapons it won’t only affect the current generation, it will affect future generations. The little girl also draws the audience’s attention to the ad with her cuteness and makes the people watching care for her. The scene, of a little girl playing in a field, was one that most could relate to. This only makes the fact that she dies even more devastating to the viewers. The use of a child was an extreme way to get
Johnson’s points across.
Johnson also had perfect timing for his ad. The “Daisy Girl” ad aired at a time when
American citizens were extremely worried about nuclear war especially with Russia. The Cuban
Missile Crisis had just happened two years ago and people were still worried about having a war of that magnitude with Russia. Johnson used the fear of the citizens to attack his opponent and his views. Since this ad aired relatively early in the campaign, this early attack on Goldwater started off Johnson on the right foot. If the fear of the Americans had not been there, then the ad would not have been as successful as it was. The other advantage his timing gave him was that at that point in the race people were still somewhat on the fence about Goldwater, believing him to have very extreme ideas. Since Johnson had already capitalized on the citizen’s fear, now he capitalized on their beliefs of Goldwater. He showed how extreme it was to use nuclear weapons especially when Russia could easily retaliate. The timing of the “Daisy Girl” ad fit Johnson’s purpose extremely well and showed the problems with electing Goldwater as president.

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The thing that most helped Johnson’s campaign was that the ad was immediately sensationalized by the media. The ad was immediately taken down after only one viewing but other channels managed to show the ad during news segments. So while only it only was showed once it was continually replayed because of the controversy that followed it. Some people even wondered if the ad was pulled on purpose. Jack Valenti who was a special assistant to Lyndon B.
Johnson, said “It showed a certain gallantry on the part of the Johnson campaign to withdraw the commercial” (The Living Room Candidate). It definitely didn’t matter that it was pulled since the ad was still in the minds of all American citizens. Johnson was able to get his point across to voters but by pulling the ad showed he was still a respectable man.
The commercial was criticized by Johnson’s opponents as being inappropriate because it showed a little girl dying. While it may have been inappropriate at the time it helped Johnson sway voters into voting for him. The ad was something that Goldwater never recovered from.
After the commercial aired 45% of women and 53% of men said that they believed Goldwater would involve the U.S. in a nuclear war if he became President (Middendorf). He tried a counter attack ad titled “We Will Bury You” which also starred children and tried to make him look less extreme. This ad described why using nuclear weapons was necessary to make sure Communist countries did not take over but failed to detract the negative light alright put on him (The Living
Room Candidate). Johnson won the presidency race with 61.1% of the popular vote and won all but six states which was the most popular plurality in a century (The American Presidency
Project).
Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Daisy Girl” ad helped him turn voters against his opponent Barry
Goldwater. It showed Goldwater as someone who would ruin America for the current generation and future generations. Johnson depicted Goldwater this way by having key points he was using

Booth 5 against him and having the perfect characters and timing to get those points across. While the ad was criticized at the time it obviously worked in Johnson’s favor. The ad is considered to have been one of the main reasons in Johnson’s landslide win against Goldwater. Before the race
Johnson’s approval rating was not great because of the disapproval of the Vietnam War but this ad made sure he was elected over his opponent. The “Daisy Girl” ad was successful in making people think that Johnson was the right man for the job.

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Works Cited
The Living Room Candidate . N.p., 2008. Web. 27 Feb 2012.
<http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/>.
Middendorf, J. William. Glorious Disaster . Basic Books, 2006. Print.
1964 Presidential Election." The American Presidency Project . N.p., 2012. Web. 27 Feb 2012.
<http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/index.php>.
"September 1,1939." Poets.org
. N.p., 2012. Web. 27 Feb 2012.
<http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15545>.